Madam Speaker, just to expand on what my colleague was saying earlier, we hear a lot of members talking nonsense. We heard the member for Winnipeg North say that there are more francophones than ever in Manitoba.
I have the numbers right here. In 1971, there were 60,500 Manitobans or 6.1%, whose mother tongue was French. In 2021, there were 39,600, which represented 4% of the population. These are the same numbers for the language spoken at home. The numbers are declining, as is knowledge of French.
In the words of Gérald Godin, the federal policy on French in Canada can generally be summarized as follows: strengthen French where it is on its last legs—